Classic Poem

I smell me
coming up behind me
some days—
sweet sarcophagal

history. The Ark
after the beasts
disembarked,
the motel bed

as the maid draws
the shades, shakes the sheets,
blinks back the stink,
the leafed hollow

where the stalled mower
sits in its exhaust
and smells of wronged
flesh, wing, meat

but me mostly,
climbing the steps,
extract of me,
stinking of me